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Gigabyte M.2 PCIe SSD 256GB Review (Page 8 of 11)

Page 8 - Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0

About PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0

This Advanced Disk Test, which is part of PerformanceTest, measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. The speed that data can be transferred between memory and a hard disk drive is one of a system's most important performance aspects. There are quite a few factors which have a bearing on this speed and the Advanced Disk Drive Test allows the user to vary most of these factors and compare the results.

The test supports any drive that can be mounted under Windows. Including IDE drives, SCSI, RAID, USB key drives, SATA, networked shared drives and external drives.

Users have the ability to test multiple drives at the same time using multiple threads, and specify:

- The size of the test file used. Larger files mean that the system cache has less of an effect on the test types, which use caching (see below).
- The size of the data block used for each read or write request. Larger blocks mean less requests and can lead to an improvement in performance.
- The choice of four access methods - C/C++ API, Win32 API cached / uncached and raw disk access.
- Sequential or random access (seeking plus reading and writing)
- Synchronous and Asynchronous access
- The split between reading and writing

The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our custom graphing components.

PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0's Advanced Disk Test generates some superb graphs right out of the box. It also provides valuable insight in simulating real world performance applications. To make things clear to you, the first graph simulates a database server, followed by a file server, web server, and workstation. Obviously, PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0 uses highly compressible data in most tests some controllers can really take advantage of. However, it also requires high IOPS capabilities for the best score. In the past, Marvell and Indilinx based drives perform pretty well in this test.

Overall, the Gigabyte M.2 PCIe SSD's performance was decent in most of the tests except for the last one. With results of 157.40MB/s, 696.10MB/s, 752.28MB/s, and 35.71MB/s, these numbers are mostly dominant against past SATA drives we have tested. The one low number came from the Workstation tests, which focuses more on reads and non-sequential tests. This seemed to line up with our previous tests, as this drive excelled at sequential and linear benchmarks, while struggling with more random data tests. Compared to its closest competitor, the Toshiba RC100 240GB with numbers of 91.11MB/s, 917.77MB/s, 1203MB/s, 83.21MB/s, the Toshiba handily wins this battle. The last Gigabyte drive we tested, the UD PRO 256GB, posted numbers of 100.34MB/s, 307.69MB/s, 447.29MB/s, and 65.47MB/s. For a final comparison, the Crucial MX500 500GB had lower marks in the first three tests with results of 155.76MB/s, 434.76MB/s, 488.07MB/s, and 73.11MB/s, in the same corresponding order.